[Intl-tobacco] WPost: Against free trade in tobacco

[Robert Weissman]

Trade and Trade-offs on Tobacco
By Sebastian Mallaby
Washington Post
Monday, January 14, 2002; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40950-2002Jan13.html


Last year the Bush administration saw the light on AIDS medicines. It came
to power supposing that drug companies' patents had to be protected, even
when that meant denying affordable AIDS remedies to poor countries. It ended
the year espousing an enlightened health exception to intellectual property
rules, thus fixing one of the least defensible aspects of the world trading
system. The shift made possible the launch of global trade negotiations in
Doha, Qatar. Aside from the bold management of the Afghan war, it was the
administration's finest accomplishment.

Now the administration faces a similar challenge on tobacco, which kills
even more people than AIDS does. According to the World Bank, about 500
million people alive today will die of tobacco-related causes. By 2030 there
will be some 10 million tobacco deaths per year, more than from any other
killer.

The challenge on tobacco is to see that, as with essential medicines for the
poor, an exception is made to the usual trade rules. When a government bars
normal goods from its markets, it is robbing consumers. But when a
government bars foreign cigarettes, it is doing them a favor. Weapons are
exempted from trade rules. Tobacco merits the same treatment.

This is not the position of the U.S. government. The Reagan administration
used the threat of sanctions to open cigarette markets in East Asia, hoping
to save Big Tobacco from the consequences of declining addiction among
Americans. Under Clinton, things improved, though the Clintonites opened
China's market and never required exported cigarettes to carry health
warnings. The present administration has not started off well. Last year it
defeated a South Korean attempt to impose stiff tariffs on imported
cigarettes. What's more, it is resisting a European effort at the World
Health Organization to exempt tobacco from trade rules.

The case for the U.S. approach is that trade policy and tobacco control are
separate. Allowing countries to ban foreign cigarettes won't necessarily
improve their health; China protected its market until recently but still
has 300 million smokers. The East Asian markets that Reagan opened featured
state tobacco firms as cynical as Western ones: In Taiwan, for example, the
most popular state brand was called Long Life. Free trade, according to this
argument, doesn't make the tobacco problem worse. In fact, by weakening
state tobacco firms, it may also weaken the state's vested interest in
resisting tobacco regulation.

It's true that regulating cigarettes -- as opposed merely to blocking their
trade -- should be the main objective. According to the World Bank, tax
increases that raise the price of cigarettes by 10 percent worldwide would
cause 40 million smokers to quit, preventing 10 million tobacco-related
deaths. Advertising bans, marketing restrictions and public health campaigns
could induce another 23 million to quit, averting a further 5 million
premature deaths. All these steps could be taken without fiddling with the
trade rules.

Yet experience teaches that tobacco trade sets back the fight for
regulation. It opens the market to Western firms that are expert at fighting
public health measures. After communism collapsed in Poland, for example,
Western newcomers figured out a way around the local advertising ban;
overall smoking rates went up, and the rate among teenage girls almost
doubled. In the Philippines, Westerners showered politicians with money and
produced a scientist who testified against taking lung cancer too seriously.

Free trade in tobacco has other nasty implications. The old state tobacco
firms of Asia were traditionally too sleepy to advertise much, even though
it may have been allowed; they seldom aimed their products at women or
adolescents. Letting in Philip Morris and its friends changes the equation.
After the Japanese market was opened in 1986, a study showed that female
college freshmen were four times more likely to smoke than their
mothers. A
survey of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand found that by 1991,
cigarette consumption was about a tenth higher on average than it would have
been if the markets had not opened.

In an ideal world, all cigarettes would be regulated, whether imported or
local. But in the real world, trade makes regulation hard, especially in
poor countries whose governments are outgunned by deep-pocketed Western
companies. When it came to AIDS drugs, the Bush administration saw that
intellectual property rules needed to be modified. In the case of tobacco,
it has a few more weeks to see the light. In March the World Health
Organization will convene its next tobacco-control negotiations.

The writer is a member of the editorial page staff.


© 2002 The Washington Post Company